Galley Slaves

The last Eagles team to win the championship of professional football might have been the loosest team in sports history. The Super Bowl was still seven years away from being born when the 1960 Birds defeated the Green Bay Packers, 17-13, the day after Christmas in the Gothic bleakness of snow-shrouded Franklin Field.


Concrete Charlie, a.k.a Chuck Bednarik, the last of the 60-minute men, tackled the Packers' Jim Taylor and sat on the squirming, fuming fullback for the last nine seconds.

Two nights before that game, quarterback Norm Van Brocklin, whose word was law, who routinely convened team "vespers" at local watering holes, was host at a loosen-your-chin-straps-boys gala that ended with several sleeping in flower beds. It didn't seem to affect the team's performance.

That was the only playoff game Vince Lombardi ever lost.

These Birds can win. These Eagles can beat the Patriots. It will take something along the lines of Villanova's practically perfect game against Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA basketball final, but it is possible.

No turnovers. Every scoring chance cashed. No injuries forcing players out of the game. And no making out the opponents to be larger than life.

Kuwait is among the wealthiest and most liberal Middle Eastern states, with a free press and what Glasser calls a "thriving civil society." When the United States liberated Kuwait in 1991, the ruling family promised to revive the National Assembly and give women the right to vote.

Twelve years later, women still can't vote and the parliament has limited influence over the emir--but this last might be a good thing, since the elected parliament is dominated by Islamic fundamentalists with sympathies for Yasser Arafat and Osama bin Laden. And, as Abdul Razak Shuyji, one of the Islamic fundamentalist leaders, observes, "Whenever there is true democracy, the Islamists will prevail."

Important, if true. In "liberal" Kuwait, women cannot go to college with men and are not welcome in the political salons. Only Muslims can be citizens (even non-Muslims born there are denied citizenship). The democratically elected Islamic fundamentalists would like to deepen this segregation and put more distance between Kuwait and the West. Saud Nasir Sabah, the Kuwaiti oil minister, says that the fundamentalists "do not welcome any further U.S. or Western investment in the country."

Besides, for Mickey to talk about unsteady judgment strikes me as a little rich. Hands up who can now recall whether Mickey was for the war or against it? Was he for Kerry or did he loathe him? Is he for gay marriage or against it? This is a man who cannot write a sentence without fifteen parentheses for qualifications, internal rebuttals, self-questioning, meta-meta-spin, obscure references to people he might once have dissed or who might have dissed him, and even an imaginary editor to subvert his own points even as he makes them.

Q: Mr. President, do you think it's a proper use of government funds to pay commentators to promote your policies?

THE PRESIDENT: No.

Q: Are you going to order that--

THE PRESIDENT: Therefore, I will not pay you to--[laughter.]

Q: Fair enough. Are you ordering that there be an end to that practice?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am. I expect my Cabinet Secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn't go forward. There needs to be independence. And Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake. And we didn't know about this in the White House, and there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press. So, no, we shouldn't be going for it.

In the 1960s, the New York playground scene was dominated by Earl "The Goat" Manigault. In the ten years he played basketball, from age twelve to twenty-two, Manigault created a powerful legend. Just over six feet tall, he once dunked over Lew Alcindor (the legendary seven-foot center from a New York high-school who led UCLA to three national collegiate championships and, after changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, had one of the longest, most productive careers in the history of the NBA). Manigault is the only person ever to perform a double-dunk, and his greatest regret was never being able to perfect sitting on the rim after a dunk, something he decided to try because he noticed that during dunks, "my waist would be hovering near the rim."

During a phenomenal junior year, in 1992, at Bethel High School in Hampton, Va., Iverson accounted for a total of 34 touchdowns. He passed for 1,423 yards and 14 touchdowns. He ran for 781 yards and 15 TDs. He intercepted eight passes as a defensive back, returning one for a score. And he returned four punts all the way to the house. . . . After leading Bethel's football team to the 1992 Division 5 state championship, Iverson sparked his school to the Virginia Group AAA state basketball championship a few months later, averaging 31.6 points.

Which takes me back to the original idea of what there is to achieve by writing about those central, retrograde aspects of Islam that clash with Western society--namely, the precepts of jihad and dhimmitude, and the dictates of sharia law. Clarity is the goal. We are unlikely to witness a security-lite inauguration four years--or eight or 12 years--hence if we remain confused about the ideology that animates our foes. And we are unlikely to ward off the spread of jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law the world over--including the U.S.A.--if we know nothing about it, or, worse, know only apologetics about it. Infinitely more pleasant, they are also misleading.

But apologetics are what we get. Take the reading list that Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, our new commander in Iraq, has given senior staff. It whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito. No Bat Ye'or; no Ibn Warraq; no Robert Spencer; no Daniel Pipes; no Paul Fregosi; no Oriana Fallaci; not even any Bernard Lewis. Ignorance before September 11 was bad enough; perpetuating that ignorance is inexcusable.

Soxblog makes some good points. In particular, I'd forgotten about the Pats beating the Steelers in Pittsburgh the week after that infamous Raiders game. That certainly was an impressive win. And I should reiterate that I really admire what the Pats have done, they are a great team, Belichick *is* a genius coach, Brady is terrific, etc. No quibbles there. I just think it's a bit much to start calling this group the greatest team ever--even better than the '70s Steelers, '80s/early '90s 49ers, or early '90s Cowboys. (Even the normally sensible Chris Mortensen of ESPN is peddling this line now.)

The commenters on Soxblog's reply did a nice job calling him out on his overrating the Rams and Colts as competition (one more note--that Ram team was coached by that bozo Martz, not Vermeil, which made a difference)--and on pointing out that those 80s teams (49ers, Bears, Skins, Giants) were all at their peaks at more or less the same time. (Speaking of beating premiere teams "under the most inauspicious conditions possible," I recall that one of those 49er Super Bowl-winning teams (1988-89) dominated the Bears 28-3 *at Soldiers' Field* in the NFC title game, in typical January Chicago weather, against a nasty Bears defense which gave up an average of 9.8 points per game at home that year. So much for those '80s Niner squads being "finesse" West Coast teams . . . And I hate admitting that, b/c as a Cowboy fan, I detest SF!)

As Soxblog mentions, the Pats' 32-4 record of the past two years is a remarkable achievement. But again, consider the competition and the state of the league as a whole (meaning, lack of other truly *great* teams).

First, let's take last year's Super Bowl champion Pats (2003-04). 14-2 record. #12 in scoring offense, #1 in scoring defense. Avg. margin of victory in regular season: 10.3 points. Playoff wins were squeakers except for beating the weenie Colts in Foxboro: 17-14 over the Titans, 24-14 vs. the Colts, and 32-29 in the Super Bowl vs. Carolina (a team that was pretty good but not "great" in any sense--QB? Jake Delhomme. Not exactly John Elway or Jim Kelly or Dan Marino). Still, a very, very good team.

How about this year's Pats? A better team, thanks to Corey Dillon. 14-2 again, #4 in scoring offense, #2 in scoring defense. Avg. margin of victory in regular season: 13.7. Awfully good, I'll admit, given the injuries, etc.

And finally, the 2001 Pats, their first Super Bowl team. 11-5. #6 scoring offense, #6 scoring defense Avg. margin of victory: 13.6 (padded by 31- and 21-points romps over the lame Colts "defense," and a 32-point blowout over the 1-15 Carolina Panthers in the last game of the season.) Playoff wins: the infamous "Tuck Rule" game against the Raiders, 16-13; the admirable win against the Steelers, 24-17 (in overtime, I believe)--made more impressive by the fact that Brady got knocked out of that game w/a knee injurie (but Drew Bledsoe isn't exactly chopped liver as a back-up QB). And then the squeaker 20-17 win over the Rams in the Super Bowl.

But now, let's look back, starting with the 1989-90 49ers--the successor to the team I mentioned above that romped over the Bears in Chicago in the NFC title game. With a new coach (this was the year Seifert took over, after Bill Walsh retired), they went 14-2. #1 scoring offense, #3 scoring defense in the league. Avg. margin of victory: 13.9 points (two touchdowns). And that margin-of-victory stat doesn't include their playoff wins, which were all thrashings: 41-13 vs. the Vikings, 30-3 vs. the LA Rams (who were pretty darn good back then - great offense w/Jim Everett, Henry Ellard, and Co.), and 55-10 against the Broncos in the Super Bowl.

And what about the next year, the 1990-91 Niners? They almost won it all *again*. 14-2, again. They barely lost the NFC title game to the Giants 15-13 (Montana was knocked out of that game). The Giants went on, of course, to beat the Bills in the infamous Scott Norwood Super Bowl.

Now, take the 1992-93 Cowboys, the first of Jimmy Johnson's two Super Bowl champs. 13-3 record. #2 scoring offense, #5 scoring defense. Avg. margin of victory: 15.2 points (over two touchdowns). Of their three losses, one was by 4 points, another by 3, and the third was a 31-7 drubbing against a very good Eagles team (11-5 that year) at the Vet, which the Cowboys avenged by spanking the Eagles 34-10 in the playoffs. Other playoff victories: 30-20 *at* SanFran (who were *14-2* that year and #1 in scoring offense, #3 in scoring defense), and 52-17 over the Bills in the Super Bowl.

What about the 1993-4 Cowboys, the 2nd Super Bowl for Johnson & Co.? 12-4 record (they lost the first two games of the season when Emmitt Smith was in a contract holdout, and I believe the other two losses came when Aikman was out hurt for 2 games). #2 scoring offense, #2 scoring defense. Avg. margin of victory in reg. season: 15.3 points. Playoff wins: 27-17 vs. Green Bay, 38-21 vs. another Seifert/Young/Rice/Watters 49er team, and 30-13 over the Bills in the Super Bowl.

The 1994 Cowboys, meanwhile, under that idiot Barry Switzer, went 12-4, #2 in offense, #3 in defense. Avg. margin of victory: 15.5 points. Beat the Holmgren-Farve-Reggie White Packers 35-9 before losing the NFC title game to San Fran 38-28 at Candlestick, after digging a 21-point hole for themselves in the first half b/c of some stupid turnovers. The Niners were just a little bit better that year (they had Deion): they beat the Cowboys by a touchdown in the regular season (also in Candlestick), which got them the crucial home-field for that NFC title game. 13-3 record. An offensive juggernaut, #1 in scoring offense (32 points per game), #6 in scoring defense. Avg. margin of victory: *18.8* points per game. Playoff wins: 44-15 vs. the Bears, 38-28 over the Cowboys, and 49-26 over San Diego in the Super Bowl.

And finally, the 1995 Cowboys--again under the buffoon Switzer, who was an awful NFL coach but managed to coast along on the talent Jimmy Johnson had assembled: 12-4, with three of those losses coming by 4, 3, and 7 points. (Damn Switzer and his crappy game management!) Avg. margin of victory in reg. season: 14.7 points. Playoff wins: 30-11 over Philly, 38-27 over Green Bay (who'd beaten the 49ers the week before, thus preventing the Cowboys from avenging their only bad loss of the season, 38-20 against the Niners), and 27-17 vs. the Steelers in the Super Bowl.

I haven't even bothered yet to look at the '70s Steelers... But just look at the Niners from 87-94, and the Cowboys from about 1991-1996. All those great seasons and Super Bowls, and those teams were slugging it out against *each other* for many of those years -- as well as (at various points) Parcells's Giants, Gibbs's Redskins, Ditka's Bears, and the emerging Packers under Holmgren.

One more crucial point: Let's assume the Pats win the Super Bowl this year, and join those early '90s Cowboys as the only squads to win 3 out of 4. What about the one year each team didn't win the Super Bowl? The 1994 Cowboys went 12-4 and lost in the NFC title game to the eventual Super Bowl champs. The 2002 Patriots went 9-7 and *didn't even make the playoffs!*

Given all this, I still think (as great as they certainly are) that it's a stretch to call this current group of Pats the "greatest team ever." Among the greatest 4 or 5? Sure. But not THE greatest, or even one of the top 2, in my (admittedly biased) opinion.

Overheard: Condi Rice, heading the wrong way from the Rotunda to Statuary Hall on her way to the official Inaugural luncheon: "I'm frankly lost in the Capitol."

(1) 32-4. That's the Pat's record the last two years. I don't see how one could logically dismiss that as anything less than an incredible accomplishment, one of the greatest in league history.

(2) Level of Competition--In their first Super Bowl Victory, the Patriots defeated the Rams, the Greatest Show on Turf, a team considered to be on the verge of dynasty at the time. Few remember that the Rams were a two touchdown favorite. It also should be added that Super Bowl XXXVI was played in a Dome, on turf. In other words, the Patriots defeated the premiere team of the era under the most inauspicious conditions possible.

In addition to the Rams, the Patriots beat the Colts last year and this year. Although it's hard to recall, only five days ago the Colts were considered unstoppable, the greatest offense ever.

(3) The teams from one's youth almost always seem greater than they actually were. None of LB's listed teams were at their peaks simultaneously.

(4) The Snow Game against the Raiders was not settled by a bad call. It was settled by an undeniably correct call that was predicated on a stupid rule. Walt Coleman is no Don Denkinger or Larry Barnett. It's not his fault he had to enforce the Tuck Rule.

(5) The Esiason-Marino thing was hilarious. Dan was upset because Boomer was so on the money with the Manning/Marino observation.

It had to be particularly painful for Marino because he lost two conference championships at home and one Super Bowl as well, all three of which were played in adequate weather conditions and all three of which he played poorly in. Peyton has also failed to play well in the biggest games of his career. Facts are facts.

But Manning can take comfort in the fact that five years into his career Magic Johnson was often derided as "Tragic" Johnson because of his dismal performance in the 1984 Finals. By the end of his career, that performance was almost completely forgotten.

So for Manning there's still time to write a different ending. For Marino, alas, the story is written.

Your QB comparisons are pretty apt. Manning is definitely going to get stuck with the Marino tag. (Dan Fouts would also be a good comparison, too--all great AFC QBs with gaudy stats who had the misfortune of playing on teams with shitty defenses.) Btw, did you see the post-game show on CBS after Colts-Pats, when Boomer Esaison said Manning was becoming the "Marino of his generation"? Boomer must've forgotten that Marino was sitting just down the table from him--Marino shot him a glare that said "If we weren't on national TV right now, you would be a dead man, blondie." Anyway, that team just needs some more guts and toughness, mostly on the defensive side of the ball and also on the O-line. Marvin Harrison is also a big X-factor in their losses--you never saw Rice or Michael Irvin disappear in big games the way he has. (But I suppose you could pin that on Manning too--Rice and Irvin never disappeared b/c Montana and Aikman weren't weenies in big games.)

Vick/Cunningham is also a good analogy, but I think Cunningham was a better passer early in his career than Vick is at the same point now. Why the hell are they shackling Vick in the damn West Coast offense? He's clearly not comfortable with it yet. He shouldn't be throwing little 5-yard dump offs to fullbacks and slants all day to his wideouts; he needs to be in a system where he can air it out.

Brady/Montana--it's also a good comparison, even though I'm sick of it. Both guys from big-time college programs (Michigan, Notre Dame) who got drafted low because they didn't fit the 6'5"/rocket arm QB/God mold. All they do is win. Where the comparison falls apart for me, at least now, is that while Brady is matching Montana in Super Bowls, Montana was a more complete passer--threw a better deep ball, I think, and put up marginally better passing numbers. (Of course, Jerry Rice might've had a little to do with that--it'd be interesting to see what Brady could do with a top-flight receiver instead of all the small guys he's got right now).

And I like the Pats a lot, too--I guess I'm just tired of hearing how great they are. If they win the Super Bowl this year, people are going to start talking about them being a dynasty in the league of the '70s Steelers, '80s 49ers, and especially the early-'90s Cowboys (the only team to win 3 rings in 4 years)--which is bunk. The Pats win because they play great team football in a league made mediocre by parity--by which I mean, they haven't had to beat as many really great teams to win their titles. The '70s Steelers had to deal with the great Madden Raider teams, the Griese-Csonka-Shula Dolphins, etc. The '80s Niners always had to get through Parcells' Giants, Gibbs' Skins, or Ditka's mid-'80s Bears teams. And the early '90s Cowboys had those epic NFC title games (the real Super Bowl in those years) against the Young/Rice/Watters 49ers, and also had to get past the excellent Packers teams of Farve's early years (with Reggie White, Sterling Sharpe et al). Meanwhile, these Pats are two late-4th quarter field goals away from losing both of their Super Bowls (and to who--Carolina?), and if not for that ridiculous non-fumble call in Foxboro when the Raiders' Charles Woodson sacked his former U-M teammate Brady, the Pats don't even get to the 2002 Super Bowl.

I guess I'm just an obnoxious Cowboy fun stuck back in the glory days, but I think either of Jimmy Johnson's two Cowboy Super Bowl teams would dismantle the Pats--simply a matter of having more talent and depth.

McNabb-Elway is another pretty good analogy, though Elway scares me more as a passer, McNabb more as a runner.

Culpepper-Moon is interesting but Dante still has his work cut out for him. Moon is one of the great overlooked QBs of all time. Don't forget all the yards he racked up in the CFL before coming to the NFL, because no one in the NFL wanted to draft a black QB when he came out of U-Washington--even though he was a Rose Bowl MVP. Over his entire pro career, the guy threw for **70,533** yards! (far more than anyone else) And if it hadn't been for the Oilers' craptacular collapse against Buffalo in the playoffs one year (remember--35-3 before the Bills came back?), and a 2-point nailbiter loss in Mile High to the Broncos in another year, he would've been in at least one Super Bowl. For my money, Moon had the most amazing arm I've ever seen on a QB (along with Marino, I guess). I say this with all due respect to Favre, Elway etc.--the difference was that Moon threw rockets while always making it look effortless. Farve and Elway look like gunslingers--when they threw hard, you could tell they were putting every ounce into it.

Speaking of which, Philip Nobile will be on O'Reilly tonight. Can you imagine the derision of Tripp's thesis that will ensue? Let's just see if Nobile says what he once wrote: that he believes that most Lincoln historians have been homophobes and that Lincoln was certainly bisexual. And let's see whether he discloses - as he didn't in the Standard - that after he quit the Tripp project, he tried to sell a rival book making the same case.

An obituary of the innovative comic-page illustrator Will Eisner yesterday included an imprecise comparison in some copies between his character the Spirit and others, including Batman. Unlike Superman and some other heroes of the comics, Batman relied on intelligence and skill, not supernatural powers.

All I can say is that the crumpling was almost certainly done to make the document appear more aged. Apart from that, it's hard to draw conclusions about when or why it was done. But it does seem that at one time CBS must have had more than one version of this document.

So what's going on? Zephyr is obsessed with imposing journalistic standards on the blogosphere. We can debate the merits of this issue, and good points can be made on both sides (I think it's a dumb idea). But what Zephyr did, and which I find unconscionable, is that she took the Armstrong Williams issue, and made up shit about our involvement with the Dean campaign to score points.

Back in September Charles Johnson documented something interesting--that the memos appeared to have been crumpled out and uncrumpled prior to scanning. . . . This evidence shows up when you drop the PDFs into Photoshop, turn the
contrast way up, and the brightness down.

When the final report came out, I took the time to compare the versions of the documents in the appendix with the documents as they were originally released by CBS. I found something very interesting. If you carefully compare, the evidence of the crumpling and uncrumpling is gone in the version released in the final report. (2B.pdf) Not only are the residual crumple marks gone, but the distortion caused by the crumpling is gone from the letters and words as well.

In the spirit of Charles Johnson's animated GIF, I prepared a flashing GIF that goes back and forth between one of the original documents as released by CBS (with the address blacked over), and the new version just released (lower resolution but less distorted.)

If you look at the two images as they cycle, it is easy to pick out areas where the crumpling distorted the text in the original document, and how the newly released document is undistorted.

This raises the question--what is CBS doing with both versions of the document?

CNN's Jonathan Klein shows off his crackling, Web-savvy intelligence:

I don't think that blogging, which is, you know, glorified Web-site hosting—that's what it is.

P.S.: He added, "Sometimes you leave people behind." Oh wait. That was Chris Bangle, not Klein. Sorry. I get my arrogant-know-it-alls-in-the-middle-of-degrading-large-institutions all mixed up. ... Mash-up blogging--it's the latest thing.

Here's something I haven't seen any blogger address yet. Kos fessed up about taking cash from Dean. But at the same time he admitted he had taken money from other politicians (apparently) but refused to disclose their identities. He said he had a nondisclosure agreement with them. So it is certain that Kos took cash from people his readers never knew about, and probably shilled for them on his blog. Is he still doing this? The nondisclosure agreements seem to create a real ethical conundrum--we will never know which opinions on his site Kos is being paid for, and which are gratis. How can his readers trust the guy?

"There was a rush because Mary felt it was a great story and she was going to get scooped on it by USA Today," Mason said. "I think she would have done that with any story. I firmly believe if they found something about Kerry and his past, they'd be rushing to get that on the air, too."

Obviously, Linda Mason was in Bhutan when the Swift Boat Vets were getting started.

So the lawyers hired to independently investigate CBS have a lawyer/client relationship with CBS. Presumably, as a senior member of that firm, Independent Review Panel Member Richard Thornburgh also has CBS as a fiduciary client. Thus, unlike similarly named government independent investigations--this one is paid for by, and carried out on behalf of, the target of the investigation.

In my Agency and Partnership class today, I'm teaching Karl Rove & Co. v. Thornburgh, 39 F.3d 1273 (5th Cir.1994). Back when Richard Thornburgh ran for the U.S. Senate, and lost, Thornburgh left behind an unpaid bill of almost $170,000 owed to Karl Rove & Co. for services in conducting a direct mail campaign. It is clear that the authorized campaign committee—the "Thornburgh for Senate Committee"—had hired Rove & Co. and that it was liable. Unfortunately, the committee was broke. So Rove sued Thornburgh personally, seeking to hold Thornburg personally liable on the debt. . . .

By the way, most folks outside the NFC Central, as it used to be called, probably don't know there's a little tradition of Packers fans actually mooning opposing players on the bus ride away from Lambeau after a Packers victory. Tony Dungy, who spent all those years with Tampa Bay when the Bucs were in that division, recalled seven such mass moonings in Green Bay.

I searched the report and could not find any mention of the DNC advertising campaign that began (I think) within one day of the CBS news story. It seems unlikely that the "Fortunate Son" campaign could have been conceived so quickly by the DNC. There is no mention of the campaign or how it was that the DNC had a slick advertising campaign all ready to go right after the CBS story.

Like I said, I can't even find any mention of the campaign in the report.

I just thought that was interesting.

It was terrible. You see how it is every night. He does three jokes. But Dave once told me that he didn't need an act. He told me that he was going to be a talk-show host. What I never got was that he was never funny enough to be a guest, so how does he become the host? But that's America for you. America wants the mediocre. It doesn't want the heroic or the moral.

Yes, it's frustrating. [Hanks] didn't go on the road [as a stand-up] and work anywhere. I went off on the road and worked. He and Michael Keaton would meet someone in the movie business and, bang, they're millionaires and living in Beverly Hills. You have [my] skill and ability and you're renting a condo.

I gave up worrying "Why do they hate us?" on the evening of September 11, 2001. But, if I were that Osodden bin Loser guy watching the infidels truck in water, food, medical supplies and emergency clothing for villagers whose jihad-chic T-shirt collection was washed out to sea, I might ask myself a more pertinent question: "Why do they like us?" . . .

But, as usual, when disaster strikes it's the Great Satan and his various Little Satans who leap to respond. In the decade before September 11, the US military functioned, more or less exclusively, as a Muslim rapid reaction force – coming to the aid of Kuwaiti Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, Somali Muslims and Albanian Muslims. . . .

Donald Sensing has a long post on the recent destruction of a 36-ton Bradley in Iraq resulting in the death of all 7 occupants. If a suspect is found, what technique should be used to discover where the other mines are planted? The ridiculous "16 approaches" method reviled by Heather MacDonald's interviewees, even now watered down? Or the rapes and crucifixion system which by common consent is torture? Is there is nothing in between?

. . . the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,” writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.” Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture—a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

How did we get to where the only choices are between the impractical and the inadmissible? Possibly by the route of partisan politics; at hearings where you may either recite the Boy Scout Pledge or the Green Lantern Oath; where the failure to supply answers never got in the way of uttering a good platitude; where votive candles burn and still burn before the letter of Geneva and the practice of rendition . . .

If you have bad news to "dump," then Arnoldmania is the cover you want. Midway through the governor's address, the Associated Press reported that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his wife, Kimberly, a Court TV commentator and now a fixture on the New York social circuit, are divorcing.

There are terrible seasonal movies thrown together in a state of laziness and disgust--for instance, that poisoned plum pudding Ocean’s Twelve, in which the director, Steven Soderbergh, and a dirty-dozen pack of stars amuse one another with how little they care about what they’re doing. Hanging out in such difficult-to-like locations as Rome and Lake Como (in George Clooney’s villa), the stars put each other on and then smile knowingly, as if in possession of some delicious secret. My, what fun. The movie treats us like servants thrilled by the wonderful time our masters are having on vacation. Even servants have pride however . . .

. . . many suppositions about Burkett are based on standards that were not applied evenly across the board. In November and December the first entry for "Bill Burkett" in Google, the most popular reference tool of the twenty-first century, was on a blog called Fried Man. It classifies Burkett as a member of the "loony left," based on his Web posts. In these, Burkett says corporations will strip Iraq, obliquely compares Bush to Napoleon and "Adolf," and calls for the defense of constitutional principles. These supposedly damning rants, alluded to in USA Today, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, are not really any loonier than an essay in Harper's or a conversation at a Democratic party gathering during the campaign. While Burkett doesn't like the president, many people in America share that opinion, and the sentiment doesn't make him a forger.

Why am I taking one more stab at getting Power Line to link my L.A. Times Year in Review? It's all about Lynne Cheney.

See, I come to the defense of Dick Cheney a couple of times in the posts, and I'd like him to know about it. I figure that, if you guys link my review, Lynne Cheney might read it--and maybe she'll tell her husband about it. It's a longshot, but it's worth a try.

So, even though the review was linked by Instapundit, Lucianne.com, Hugh Hewitt, Captain Ed, and others--I'm still not satisfied. I gotta have Lynne Cheney see it! And for that, it's Power Line or bust. The links are Part One (coverage of the election, including the Times's misrepresentation of one of Dick Cheney's remarks), and Part Two (other coverage--including the duck-hunting trip with Dick Cheney and Justice Scalia).

Either way, I promise this is the last e-mail I'll send you asking for a link for these pieces. . . .